Look Mum No Computer feels both fresh and familiar. Fresh, due to its unique setting and soundtrack revolving around electronics and modular synthesizers. Familiar, as it gives me a similar joy to playing my childhood favourite, Raptor: Call of the shadows .. frantic action, all gameplay, awesome soundtrack, no handholding, slowly building up your arsenal, etc. The interactive music highlights both the game's main strength and weakness. The more you upgrade your weapons/synthesizer, the more intricate and rich the music gets. As you start out with zero upgrades, the music is also bare-bones. The upside: it only gets better from here, but you do need to be quite patient. As you're nearing the end, the music does get absolutely amazing! Related to this is the difficulty curve: it starts out easy, then very slowly picks up .. then the difficulty spikes around the latter half~third of the game. Nonetheless, this latter half more than makes up for the slow start, so don't let this discourage you from picking up the game. It really is a gem! Not just the music and the gameplay mechanics are great, but so are the cute and quirky graphics, the fun bits of dialogue and the overall tone. About the YT channel tied to this game (also called Look Mum No Computer). You definitely don't have to know it to enjoy the game; I suppose they capture the same upbeat tinkering spirit :) ..and that Sam is the actual mad lad who made the music. That's also what confused me at first: knowing the channel, I kind of expected the game to be more in-depth on how to build electronics or modular synthesizers, but that's not what this is! That would be cool too, but maybe then it wouldn't be as good at being a proper game. In short, I can only highly recommend you give Look Mum No Computer a try! I'd love Sam & The Bitfather to make more of this in the future! PS: if the game's effects are straining your eyes, try disabling "Chromatic aberation" and "Bloom" in the settings
All in all, I had a great time with Bear & Breakfast; it simply oozes so much charm and personality: the art, the music, (most of) the writing and overall atmosphere is supercozy and enjoyable. It's also relaxing in the sense that, while it's a management game, there's no pressure whatsoever: you can do whatever you want, whenever you want. The pace of the game is entirely up to you. That said: while I enjoyed the game, there are some significant flaws to tolerate: B&B has a story, but I feel like it didn't mesh well with the gameplay. It starts out pretty strong story-wise, introducing several fun characters, but it quickly transitions into pure gameplay .. and doesn't really do all that much character building throughout most of the game .. then it picks back up towards the end, but it feels quite all-over-the-place there. The gameplay itself has its ups and downs: most of the mechanics are fine, but do get tedious/repetitive over time. The game remidies this by eventually letting in-game characters take over specific tasks for you, if you want. That's great, but in my playthrough it felt like these automation mechanics were introduced too late, when the task already was quite repetitive. This may be caused by being stuck too long on a couple of obscure main quests à la "Go find this thing" .. without giving any clue where to look. The ample amount of charm and personality mostly make up for these gripes, so I do recommend giving Bear & Breakfast a go! I find it works best playing in short sessions. Definitely curious to see what Gummy Cat will be working on next!
I gotta say: fans of id's masterpieces have been absolutely pampered for the last few years .. we already got an enhanced version of Doom I before .. then of Quake I .. then Quake II .. and now this gem too .. and I didn't have to pay a single dime for any of it .. it's just insane, and they're all amazing! If you've never owned a copy of the original Doom .. best 10 bucks ever to spend on an FPS, you're in for a treat :) This game is the very definition of a timeless classic. That aside, I just gave this a try to see what it's like playing the game with Andrew Hulshult's remixed soundtrack. I already knew the IDKFA versions before and they're awesome tracks to listen to on their own .. but perhaps a bit too much "non-stop dialed-up-to-11" to always match what's going on in the game. (a dynamic music system that dials it back a little in calmer moments, that'd be interesting) Can't wait to try the new Legacy of Rust episode! If it's anything like the extra episodes in Quake I & II's enhanced editions, I know it'll be awesome! Thank you to everyone involved!
